york city. host: how about a question or comment on the budget talks in the fiscal cliff? caller: i would like to talk about that. >> when you speak we need to broaden the tax base and you want to ask the poor people, because at this country that is in poverty or close to party, and you want them to not only pay a payroll tax and you want that to go away, but you don't want the rich to basically -- you want to keep their tax cuts but you want to add an income tax on top of their payroll tax for the port, how do you justify that? guest: first of all, what i said was a majority of americans pay more in payroll taxes and income taxes. the poverty rate in the united states is 15.9%. 46.4% of americans don't pay income taxes. obviously, if you are near poor, you could argue he should not have to pay income taxes. i don't know what the right amount is, somewhere between 15.9% and 46.4%, but i think it is a lot closer to 15.9%. i believe, and as i said before, that we need to increase the effective tax